There was a time ...

[NanceGreggs]

There was a time when I viewed Trump supporters as being naive. Having grown up in NY, I was aware of who and what he was. But I knew that there were voters across the country who were ignorant of his true nature, and were dazzled by his on-air persona as the host of a reality show that had little to do with reality.

Then there was a time when I viewed Trump supporters as unwitting victims of a natural-born huckster, the kind of unsophisticated folk who buy snake-oil cure-alls at county fairs, only to realize they've been 'had' not long after the oh-so-convincing salesman has left town.

Then there was the time that I realized that Trump supporters didn't care that they'd been 'had'. They wanted to believe that the snake oil they were being sold actually cured the country's ills - and they lined-up to buy more.

Then came the time that I saw that Trump supporters were not unwilling nor unwitting victims who believed in pursuing democracy by some alternate route. On the contrary - they were abandoning the principles they'd once laid claim to - they were embracing bigotry and hatred. And they were doing so not in pursuit of forming a more perfect union - but in blind obedience to an immoral, corrupt, power-hungry narcissist.

There was a time when I saw Trump supporters as fellow - albeit misguided -
citizens. Now I don't even see them as fellow human beings. I see them as rabid animals.

I see them as criminals who stormed the Capitol. I see them as unhinged people who attack mask-wearing children on their way to school. I see them as crazed individuals who threaten airline personnel, who scream at cashiers, who threaten the lives of those trying to protect the public's health by adhering to mask and vaccine mandates.

I now see Trump-Humpers as deranged, disease-carrying lunatics who have little regard for democracy - and even less regard for human life.

I've come a long way in the past four-plus years - and I do not take any joy in my transformation from caring human being to not caring that some people are dying as a result of their own allegiance to a sociopath who they still don't realize cares nothing about them, and never will. And at this point, neither do I.

There was a time when I gave my fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt - a time when I held out hope that they would come to their senses, when facts would prevail, when the truth would become self-evident.

I no longer hold onto that false hope. There are those among us who are too deranged to see the obvious - and defeating them is our only chance at saving our democracy.